Hockey Tote

To go with all the other hockey items, I appliqued this tote bag from Dollar Tree. The design is from Luna Embroidery.

I'm usually much better on my names. You can see that Logan is crooked. I really hate that. I stitched out this bag before I purchased my 10 needle. Because the bag is vinyl, I couldn't do a basting stitch around the perimeter of the design. It would have left holes that couldn't be fixed. So I used some KK2000 and kind of held the bag. Sometimes I'm able to pin the bag to the stabilizer but it just depends on what hoop I'm using. I pin on the blue straps, If the hoop is small, then I'm not able to do that.

Hockey Pillowcase

My little great nephew is a hockey fiend. I made this for him last year. I absolutely adore the referee fabric. It's from Robert Kaufman and the line is called Sports Life. Unfortunately, I can't tell you anything about the helmet fabric. The font is Tinker Toy.

Hockey Towel

This is one of my favorite towels. The design is from Luna Stitches. She has a lot of helmet and hat designs. I sent her a message asking if a goalie mask would be possible. This is what she came up with. You can find her site at http://lunastitches.com/category/new.htm.

The font is Tangerine from Trendy Stitches.

Pillowcases for Connor

 Here are a couple of pillowcases I made for my nephew Connor. The superhero fabric was found at Fabric World down in Stone Mountain, GA. I had the good fortune of hearing about a truckload sale there and as luck would have it, I would be vacationing in the area. Yeah for me! Anyway, all the cotton fabric was $2/yard. Yep, can't beat that now can you! The polka dot fabric I bought at Hancock's last year during their summer clearance sale. Since I really didn't know any super hero sayings, I decided to not embroider anything on the band.

The fabric for the Star Wars pillowcase was purchased at Joann's. I WISH it cost me $2/yard. Unfortunately, it was a lot more. I really don't understand why Joann's feels their fabric is worth more than the quilt shops. Enough of that rant!

Both the light saber design and the font were purchased off of Etsy. Can you see the metallic threads that were used? I had a minor problem with shredding but I was able to get the project finished without too much frustration.

Reverse Applique

This shirt is for my coworker Cindy. She did a very nice thing and thought of me when someone handed her a boatload of leather. She thought of me first and asked if I wanted it. Who could say no to that! I've only made a couple of things so far, two Kindle covers. I also used leather for one or two football appliques. I'm hoping that the leather will be put to good use in 2012. I have some ideas fermenting.

Back to the shirt, the soccer applique is from Starbird Stock Designs. It's called a reverse applique because you put the applique fabric on the bottom and cut away the top part of the shirt. "Normal" applique involves putting the fabric on top of your shirt. This was the first time that I tried the reverse applique method. The font is Jester from 8CAAP.

Basketball Items for Luke

For some reason, I love designs that have flames shooting out of them. I found this basketball design at Bows and Clothes. The design called for the use of two fabrics for the flames. I had flame fabric on hand and decided to try that instead of a plain red and a plain orange or yellow. The font is Clarence that came with my 4D Extra software.

 

I saw this basketball fabric at Jacqi's shop. Gosh, I wish they would quit coming out with such beautiful novelty fabrics. I could work on other items besides pillowcases. At least they're a quick project. For those of you who follow my blog, the banding fabric is the same that I used on Whitney and Joshua's beer pillowcases last year. I love that fabric. I thought the same fabrics would work with the basketball fabric. 

 The font is also the same as I used for the beer pillowcases. It's "Pharmacy" by Jolson's.

Let's Play!

My nephews are getting too big I think to wear stuff that Auntie makes them. I thought this design from Applique Corner might work for Donovan. I was a little hesitant with it due to the font. A little young looking for him. I maybe should have edited that out and replace it with a different font. He likes the shirt so I'm ok with it I guess.

The t-shirt is actually brown. Get it, football brown. It looks black here but it really is brown. So we already know that I didn't want the t-shirt to be too babyish for him. Well using a quilting cotton for the applique wasn't going to cut it. I start to look around the sewing room. I spied a bag of faux leather and other upholstery fabric. I decided that faux white leather wasn't quite right. I then found some microfiber fabric. The right side of the fabric wasn't right either but the back or wrong side of the fabric was just right. It had this very rough texture to it. Nothing girly about that. It was a bit of a challenge to stitch through. My thread was shredding trying to get through it. I decided to try a different brand of white embroidery thread and that did the trick. Went onward without any problem. I did have to go back and manually satin stitch where the shredding occurred.

The other difficult thing about the fabric is that I think it took a toll on my small, curved, very sharp embroidery scissors. The fabric was very thick, really too thick for those little scissors. I had cut leather with them without a hitch. This time, I'm fearful I wasn't so lucky. I used them to cut thread yesterday and they were pretty dull. I don't have any idea how to sharpen these curved blades. I'll have to research this little dilemma.

Now One for Matthew

My family went down to Kansas City this past summer for my sister's big birthday shindig. The day we left, we stopped by my sister Karen's house to pick up daughter number three and say goodbye to daughter number one. They decided to stay at Karen's house because of 1. the beer, 2. the in ground swimming pool, 3. the beer.

My nephew Matthew has been growing vegetables this summer. Matty may be seven or eight. What can I say, too many kids in the family. He planted his huge garden and has been tending it. When we stopped by, he got a bag and sent us back to Wisconsin with potatoes, onions and cucumbers. We ate the potatoes up right away. Great job Matty! 

I knew that I wanted to make him something farming related. When I stopped by Hancock's, I saw that they had all of the John Deere fabric on sale. Yippee. We're in business. It took a little bit of time to find a simple font that would be similar to the font that the tractor company uses. The font is called Chachie and is available from 8 Claws and a Paw.

Using Vinyl in Machine Applique

The last few weeks I've been reading about people using "sports" vinyl for some of their embroidery designs. I decided that I really wanted to try this. As most people know, I do a lot of girl "things". I have a lot of nephews but I really don't make anything for them. With girls, the items I make can be girly. Girly is still good as you get older. With boys, I feel that pretty much after age 3, they wouldn't be caught dead with something their aunt made them. So I needed to find a design and materials to give some tshirts a little punch.

First up, was to go out and find myself some vinyl. I found two pieces at Hancock Fabrics on the back tables. One I bought for football appliques and the other looks like basketball material. That one is actually tablecloth vinyl. I really like the dimensional look that the vinyl gave these designs. There was no problem at all with my machine going thru the vinyl.

As far as the designs go, it took a bit of searching to find just the right ones. Once again, I didn't want anything babyish. I wanted the designs to show some action. I think I found the right ones.

 I found this design at Stitch on Time. I think they are based out of England. I think that the net with the ball is such a cool look. It looks better in person. The little fuzzies at the bottom are from the back of the vinyl. Remember that it's for a table so it's backed with flannel. Too bad I stitched this out late at night. I don't like the yellow. I guess it looked good at midnight!

This is the look that I really wanted but was not able to find it. It finally dawned on me to check a site that I knew had lots of designs but I had never ordered from. The basketball applique is from Planet Applique. This design on it's own would have never worked with a plain cotton but with the vinyl, it really would be ok for just the basketball alone. The basketball player silhouette is from Stitch on Time. That really pulled the whole look together. I just stacked one design on top of another and away I went.

Bad to the Bone

Sometimes boys can be a little bit of a challenge to make things for. A few weeks ago, Five Star Fonts came out with this design. I really liked it. Before I plunked down the cash, I sent the link to my sister to see if my nephew would like it. She enthusiastically said he would. So all I needed was to find a black t-shirt, then I was in business.

The shirt will be shipped off to my nephew Donovan or DJ as his mother calls him. And yes, he is bad to the bone but he's adorable and we love him.

Vrooooom!

My little nephew Connor is a car fiend. He's been this way since maybe crawling stage. I envision that this little guy will become an auto engineer. He has the brain of an engineer and the career runs in the family. The problem that I have with making things for Connor is that everything seems so babyish for him. Like I said, his brain is in engineering school right now even though he's only six. I hope he likes the shirt. The flame fabric for the helmet is the same that I used on his pillowcase. I need to make it a point when I go fabric shopping next to really make an effort to buy decent hair fabric. Connor has red hair. I can't just slap on red fabric and call it a day. I went with a light brown and that didn't quite do the trick. The applique is from Planet Applique.

This next shirt is a toile design from Embroidery Library. I just love all their toile designs. I purchased the shirt on clearance from Target. I was pretty sure I could find a design that would work with the stripe. I wish the design was a little bit larger but oh well. That's the largest it came in. The great thing about toile designs is that there is only one color so no constant thread changes.

I have been wanting to do a pillowcase for Connor for some time now. I figure it was hard to go wrong with that one. The fabric is from Alexander Henry, at least the giant car print was. I found that while shopping at Nancy's Notions one weekend. The black and white racing fabric came from Hobby Lobby. The font is Heavy Heap. I couldn't find a purchased font and I tried to do the auto digitize the font in my software but it didn't look very pretty. One of the gals over at Sew Forum was gracious enough to digitize it for me. Heavy Heap is the font used for Mattel's Hot Wheels products.

Is this a crazy mix of prints or what? I hope the little guy likes it.

Let's Play Ball!

I do so many girl things that sometimes it's fun to do some things for boys. My problem is that sometimes the boy embroidery designs may be a little babyish. I'm taking a chance on some things for my nephews. I figure if it's too babyish, hopefully they'll at least wear them to bed!
I love how this shirt turned out. Too bad my camera skills need improving. The color of the t-shirt is actually a bright, bold yellow. I really like the colors. The design from Applique Cafe. The font is Kindergarten from 8CAAP. Instead of using fabric for the football applique, I used a piece of leather. I really like how it turned out.

The next design came from Embroidery Library. I really like this design also. Very traditional and can be used for any age group. I have been doing so many applique designs, I somehow lost my brain when doing a regular embroidery design. This design has about 25,000 stitches. I really needed to beef up the stabilizer but totally didn't do it. So there is a little bit of puckering and the design did curl coming out of the dryer. My sister-in-law will just have to touch it up with the iron unfortunately.

The final design comes from Planet Applique, a cut little baseball player. The baseball cap had a gold star on it but I skipped over that part and decided to put Luke's name on the cap. The font is Roman I think and it came from my software. I didn't want to merge the lettering with the design so I had to came back and do the lettering as a separate design. As hard as I tried, I just couldn't get my centering correct.